Archives for June 2018

In 401 BC Cyrus the Younger hired 10,000 Greek soldiers to help him try to win the Persian empire from his brother. The force was deep into the empire when Cyrus was killed in battle. The Greek soldiers had to fight their way out of the Persian Empire.

BULL!

So what?

What lesson does that have for today?

Before the ten thousand went into the Persian Empire and emerged, it was thought an impossible task.

It gave one Alexander III the idea that it could be done, and in 334 B.C. he did. Thus Alexander the Great invaded Persia and began his ten year war to defeat them. It was at the Battle of Gaugamela on October 1, 331 B.C. that Alexander’s army of 35,000 defeated Darius III’s army of 200,000. It took Alexander two years to chase down Darius. When he did Darius’ own guard killed him, hoping to win Alexander’s favor. He killed them all because if they’d do it to Darius…well.

So the ten thousand provided the spark, the proof, that something thought to be impossible was in fact quite doable.

I wonder if we have come to such a moment in our country? Has the thought that Donald Trump and his administration jailing babies done that? Or was it the pictures of little children crying as their parents are handcuffed and jailed done it? Or the pictures of the groups of people shackled together in orange jump suits standing in a court room done it? Was it the culmination of all these abominations and more?

Have the Trump backers had enough? Are some now saying, “Hey, wait a minute. I didn’t sign up for this!”?

Certainly the spineless Republican representatives in Congress are not saying much. But regular folks are.

Maybe the gleeful attitude in the White House over all the hurt they are causing is starting to lose it’s luster? Well, not for racists like Stephen Miller, but for some others. Trump’s number around his core constituency is dropping, not by much. Some of my right wing buds are posting videos or pictures to try and say, “Well, they did it too.” No. No. they didn’t. They didn’t jail babies. They didn’t create pop-up orphanages.

In other news the administration is proposing combining the Departments of Labor and Education thus destroying both. Hey, why not? They’re kind of useless anyway, right? I guess Betsy DeVos wasn’t destroying public education in this country fast enough for the right wing crowd. Did you see the picture of her last night? She looked beat to crap, tired, haggard. Ya know, even when you are destroying things swinging that sledge hammer all day gets to be tiring.

Forgot to mention, the prez signed something saying don’t separate families anymore. What to do with those separated? They don’t know, but there’s no effort to reunite them.

I was curious about the height of Stephen Miller, Scott Pruitt, and Wilbur Ross. I had seen Ross and Pruitt being interviewed next to someone and they seemed diminutive. I could not find the heights of Miller and Pruitt. Ross is 5’ 8”. When I was looking for Miller’s information I found articles asking if Miller had any friends. The answer seems to be no. He’s not married. His whole life seems to be wrapped up in this hate he has. In college he did have one friend, Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi. The article said Miller disavowed him. Even that was too much for Miller said the article. I wonder if that is true. Or did he just publicly disavow him for his own personal gain? The policies Miller has tried to institute many say are akin to what right wing hate groups in Europe are in favor of doing. I’m thinking that these three men are suffering from some sort of Napoleonic complex, and Miller seems to be sexually dysfunctional as well. Hey, but it’s just my opinion.

In a story of triumph, a couple decided to do a GoFundMe to raise $1500 for bail money for the immigrants incarcerated. They didn’t raise $1500. By nine o’clock last night they had raised $15,000,000.00!

The administration has asked the Defense Department to provide them with JAGs, military lawyers, to help process all the people the administration has arrested. Is there any government money for the immigrants arrested? Not that I’ve heard. In fact, last month the administration quietly killed a provision that allowed for the funding of lawyers for immigrants seeking asylum. If you have any doubts about how evil this administration is let that stand as evidence. We aren’t talking manslaughter type stuff where they can say, “Oh gosh, I didn’t know, or mean for that to happen.” They planned for it to happen, and they welcomed it when it did. This was pre-meditated. That’s murder. ( Okay, they didn’t kill anyone. Well, not yet. Maybe a few dropped dead, but they didn’t do it. I get that. This is an analogy. A comparison of relationships between two ideas based on parallels or connections. Thought I better spell it out. )

Maybe, the best thing I could do would be to start a GoFundMe to send Stephen to Las Vegas and get him laid. Or send him to Russia so we had it on tape.

Last night, I saw two commentators lose it. One couldn’t speak as she was going off the air. The other was so visibly upset they had to cut away several times and come back. The reason?

The United States of America is now jailing babies. Yup, that’s right. Babies are being kept in cages. What does the government think, that those babies will stage a break out?

The Trump administration is jailing babies. They are happy about this. It is what they want. They like the protests and the outrage. It is what they want.

Over half a dozen governors have pulled their troops or refused to send any to the southern border.

Trump gave a speech yesterday where he was saying how he was being tough on immigration. They: Trump, Miller, Sessions et al think this is a winning political strategy.

They are now having mass trials with people seeking asylum gang shackled in orange uniforms. Made to plead as a group. Judges are interviewing children of four and five years old at hearings. These children are without their parents, without a lawyer, they are alone facing a judge who decides their fate.

For some reason this whole immigration thing has people excited. For me, when I sit back and think about Jeff Sessions, and Stephen Miller being in charge of all this, I can only draw one conclusion, “What did we expect?”

Jeff Sessions last night when asked by Laura Ingraham on Fox how this was different than what happened in Nazi Germany, Jeff straightened her right out. You see in Nazi Germany they were trying to keep the Jews in. Which brings me to the question of, “what are we trying to do?” Keep people out? I don’t know. Whatever it is, many people think it is unamerican.

Fortunately, the Republicans in Congress are thinking about maybe really thinking about it. Susan Collins, always put forth as the one reasonable Republican, says she can’t support Diana Fienstein’s bill because it’s too broad. It says you can’t arrest anyone within one hundred miles of the border. Whether it really says that I don’t know. Fienstien said, “Fine, I’ll take it out.” Ball is in your court Susie.

Orin Hatch doesn’t like it, but has no real solution. John McCain says it’s not who we are. But John, it is who we are – now. So far not one Republican Senator is willing to sign on to the Feinstein bill to stop this. But don’t worry Ted Cruz to the rescue! Ted, ever the sympathetic one (I’m kidding of course), is going to introduce legislation to fix it all. Yeah, he wants to speed up the deportation process! But here’s the compassionate part: the kids get to stay with their parents until they are sent back. What a guy! Go Ted. You idiot.

Meanwhile his Democratic opponent, Representative Beto O’Rourke, has been speaking out, going to the border and holding protest rallies. He’s young. He’s passionate. He’s good looking. He seems like a decent guy. All the qualities Ted lacks. There’s a good chance Beto will defeat Ted. wouldn’t that be a pity? No more Mr. Green Eggs and Ham in the Senate chamber. Frankly, I never understood why he wasn’t arrested for trespassing when he shutdown the government and then trespassed on the closed WWII Memorial.

All the living First Ladies have come out against this policy. Melania said a little. She should go on Fox and Friends and speak out so her husband would hear her.

I like Chris Hayes’ idea that Donald and Jeff should go down to the border and help the authorities rip kids out of their parents arms. They’re a little short handed down there. Two governors, one Republican and one Democrat, have pulled their troops off the border. No wait, the Democrat said he wasn’t sending any; the Republican governor forbade his troops from helping in the ripping of babies out of the arms of their mothers.

Yesterday, as the news crew was waiting for Sarah Sanders to come out and lie to them they all got a text message. It was audio tape of children crying, begging for their fathers or mothers. One little girl had the number of her aunt memorized, which is a good thing because if all they had was a piece of paper with the number on it, that got taken away. The little girl was begging to call her aunt. She was being ignored. The people in charge were casually talking bout the crying being an orchestra and about mundane and routine tasks they needed to get done. The tape is really really bad. It brings home how terrible this policy is. The news people all got it just before the news conference. Guess what? Sanders never showed. Not even she was willing to take those slings and arrows. For that job they flew in Nielsen the DHS Secretary to explain, and clarify. And she lied. But let’s skip the lying, let’s go to the question she was asked, Where are the girls and the little children? (Because all we’ve seen are the older boys.)

She didn’t know.

When asked how the children would be reunited with their parents she explained that each child and each parent get a number. DHS keeps a file on the connections. After they “process” the children they get sent to HHS, the parents get arrested and sent into the criminal justice system. So the next question asked was do the kids and parents keep the numbers when they go into their respective internment process? The answer? She doesn’t know.

Great.

Now we have reports that parents are being presented with kids or given numbers to kids that aren’t theirs.

Wilbur Ross and his lies, his ties to Russia, China, and shady financial dealings.

Wilbur Ross is our Secretary of Commerce. He seems to be more interested in his commerce than ours.

In a stunning report in Forbes, which I could no longer get to because it appears the site is down, old Wilbur (remember Mr. Ed? No? Nevermind.) who promised to get rid of all his holdings in shady Russian companies lied. He admitted now that he lied. He didn’t even try the newly minted defense of he forgot until his memory was refreshed lie.

As you may remember Wilbur Ross was involved with the bank of Cyprus, a favorite money laundering spot for Russian oligarchs and Vladimir Putin. In fact, the Russian companies that Ross promised to divest himself of were shipping companies tied to Putin, Russia, and Putin’s buds the aforesaid oligarchs. Ross claimed he divested himself of the companies. But not before he took out a huge position betting their stock would go down once he disclosed he was divesting himself, and not before a bunch of people close to him still held shares in these companies.

And when the “Paradise Papers” leaked (those are the ones from Panama) it showed Ross still owned interest in one of these companies. A company btw that is controlled by Putin’s son-in-law, whom I guess is married to the rock and roll gymnast daughter of Putin. But hey, Ross didn’t lie, according to his lawyers or spokesperson, he filed amended documents, just like Sessions after being confirmed clarified his comments to the Senate committee about his failed memory and lies to them.

So here’s what Ross did, in one instance, when the New York Times asked him about his holdings in a Kremlin linked shipping company, Ross sold the shares, and before the Times article was released to the public he took up a huge short position in that company. This would be called trading on insider information as far as I know, but hey, this is Trump world and it’s probably not called insider information by them, just because the public didn’t know. I mean it’s not like Ross lied to a judge under oath. He only lied to the New York Times. In fact, he didn’t even do that. He only took up an investment position because he knew something the rest of us (the public) didn’t know. What’s the big deal?

And yes, Ross did divest himself of much of these holding. How? By giving the shares to family members! What’s wrong with that? He got rid of the shares didn’t he? What I can’t understand is why hasn’t he blamed Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats yet? I mean come on.

And to round out the story, the Bank of Cyprus’ biggest shareholder is Victor Vekselberg. That was the guy stopped at the airport by Mueller’s folks. Vekselberg’s cousin, an American citizen, runs a firm of which Vekselberg is the majority owner, if not the only person with money in that firm. It was that firm that paid Michael Cohen $500,000 for real estate advice. Yeah, no big deal, nothing to see here. Right? Am I right?

This is our commerce secretary hard at work, not for you, but for himself.

Day 516 Part II
It’s still Tuesday June 19, 2018
There are still 1,062 Days to Go

Say what you will about Nixon, at least he was focused on problems that faced this country and the people in it and the world. Henry Kissinger did a tour of Latin America and came back with a report, which basically said lots of money has to be put into Latin America, including Central America, or people are going to flee those countries and come to the U.S. seeking a better life. The Republicans at that time balked and did not follow his advice, saying his solution was too costly. Their solution? Do nothing. It’s been the Republican playbook ever since.

So now we have an administration that has decided to separate children from their parents as they attempt to cross the border. This is their solution to the problems created in other countries where people are fleeing violence. Remember Trump was saying MS-13 was coming here? No, they are not; their victims are. Hey, why not help out those countries that have problems from drug cartels and gangs, from corrupt politicians and their strongmen? Oh, wait. Donald likes strongmen. In fact, he has said he wishes he could do what Kim does in North Korea or Duerte does in the Philippines. There is no subtlety here. It’s right there in your face. Besides, maybe Donald or Ivanka or Jared can cut a deal and get a hotel or a line of jewelry or a real estate loan from someone over there (where ever “there” is).

In a follow up to the Roger Stone meeting with Russians during the campaign:
The other guy in that whole forgetfulness until his memory was refreshed by evidence whose name is Caputo has been on TV and his defense is following a similar line to that of Don Jr. and the Russian collusion defense:
He’s a busy man,
It was maybe two minutes of his life,
He handed it off to Roger Stone and has no idea what happened after that,
and it’s the Democrats fault (or at least he posted his excuses on a website that has the word Democrat in it, which somehow one should infer the Democrats are to blame.)

Caputo’s defense is that the guy’s name was Greenberg, or at least that’s the name he used with him. How was he to know he was Russian? Greenberg was an FBI informant for years, so how can we trust him? And wait for it … He forgot.

Forgot what exactly? He forgot that he sent text messages to Roger Stone where he used the word Russian at least two times to identify the fellow named Greenberg, and the fellow named Greenberg had a heavy Russian accent. How was he to know he was a Russian? Hum. Lemme go way out on a legal investigative limb here and suggest that you knew and Roger knew because you used the word “Russian” twice in texts to Roger and that you knew the guy had a heavy Russian accent?
Oh. Oh. You forgot? You and Roger both forgot. Forgot about the conversations with Greenberg, forgot about your communications back and forth because (here’s the double excuse so popular with this crowd) 1) – nothing came of it, and 2) You are busy people.

There’s another excuse. At the time no one was thinking about Russians. Besides, they weren’t dealing with the Russian government. They were dealing with an individual that they had no idea he was Russian. If they had any inkling at all they would have told the authorities. Yeah, I mean, come on, the guy had a heavy Russian accent. He was identified and referred to as a Russian in the communication between Caputo and Stone, how were they to know?